Seal Master
by TGRS
Summary: Seeing Caged Bird Seal used on her uncle for the first time deeply affects Hinata. Setting her on path of fixing her broken clan. Very smart, godlike, dimension Hopping Hinata.
1. The growth

The growth

Hinata Hyuuga was a very kind girl, despite being born into a very cold family as heiress of all things. During one of her training sessions, her father activated a Caged Bird Seal on her uncle. She was only 3 years old at the time. It left a very powerful impression on her. For many weeks after the incident she would wake up screaming in cold sweat, seeing various members of her family tortured in her dreams.

Her equally kind mother was the one who helped her during those nights. She was also the one to explain how the clan was divided, and what seals were. Even being so young, Hinata understood the value of the seal in protecting her clan. Equally, she never wanted to see anyone else in her clan hurt like her uncle ever again. This led her to swearing to fix her clans seal. Everyone should be wearing it with pride, including main family, and not be afraid of it being used for punishments.

Shortly after the incident with her uncle, a Kumo ambassador tried to kidnap Hinata. It not only further traumatized the kind girl, but also lead to the death of her uncle. Despite trauma, this event only solidified her goals. New seal was the best way to stop foreign shinobi targeting her family.

By the time Hinata was 5 years old she already was able to read, and it was rare to see her without a scroll or book about basic seals. In fact, she even started to draw the most basic of seals. It made her mom very proud of her. Her dad, on one hand, approved her seal obsession, because it was big part of their clan heritage. As heir it was her responsibility in the future to apply the Caged Bird Seal. It was a very complex seal that required solid understanding of seals to be used. On the other hand, Hinata was doing very poorly in their clan's fighting style – Jyuken, which was a very important skill to be proficient in for the clan heir.

The same year her mother gave birth to her younger sister Hanabi, and died shortly after due to birth complications. Death of her mother devastated Hinata, as her mother was the only one in the clan who was kind to her. She was Hinata's rock and support, and now she felt like the ground was taken from under her feats. It took couple of weeks for Hinata to gather her resolve, and she took to studying seals with renewed vigor. After all, she promised to her mother on her death bed that she will not allow Caged Bird Seal being placed on her younger sister's forehead.

Her dad could hardly be called affectionate while her mother was alive, now he become downright cold. Her training sessions became harsher and his displeasure at her Jyuken failures more obvious each day, often ending with her in infirmary. As result, she became even more closed off, and more obsessed with seals. Branch members often had to fetch her for meals, as she would forget and skip them. The only one she was close to was her sister. More often than not she would be studying in her sister's room, sometimes while holding her little sister in her arms.

When she was 7, she already progressed to the experimental seals, which were dangerous to work with directly. The safest route was in using solid clones for testing. This led to Hinata discovering her Suiton affinity as well as realizing that she was very good at the Suiton Jutsu.

Her father was less than happy to discover that she was using her time studying elemental Jutsu while still less than proficient in Jyuken. He would often send branch members to confiscate any scrolls or books not related to what he saw as appropriate materials. Thus, starting Hinata on her journey of developing intricate ways of hiding "contraband" materials from her father and branch members.

As 8 years old she joined ninja academy, which was unusual for a Hyuuga heir. Her father and clan elders already dismissed her as someone they could mold into the "perfect" clan head and instead focused on training her 3 years old sister. Hinata was still very close to her sister, but her father and elders were putting efforts into separating them, to ensure that Hanabi would not follow in her older sister's footsteps.

Being in presence of so many other kids who were not afraid to express themselves, many from other big clans with their own specializations, gave Hinata a lot of new ideas for seals to experiment on. Which was very nice, as she was running out of study materials for seals.

Even though her clan had probably one of the biggest libraries of sealing arts in Konoha, the sealing materials rarely were more advanced that required for application of Caged Bird Seal. However, unlike with buildings, when demolishing something was easier than building, with seals the opposite was happening. It was much easier to apply a seal, than it was to disable one. It often led to explosive results that causes extensive damage to the area around seal, the medium the seal was applied on, and in the case of storage seals to a content that was sealed.

Sealing arts required a steady hand, extraordinary penmanship, sharp mind, as well as lots of time and efforts. All of which were helping Hinata grow the spiritual - Yin part of her chakra, while the Yang part was not developing quite as fast.

This kind of imbalance was quite common among ninjas. For example, both Inuzuka and Akimichi families had excess of Yang chakra. Therefore, their Jutsu tended to use more of it that Yin part, which resulted in physical changes to their bodies. Yamanaka, Nara and Kurama families have excess of Yin chakra, therefore their Jutsu tended to use more of it and had much smaller physical effects on the environment.

Elemental Jutsu tended to use more Yang chakra. Genjutsu was heavily skewed to Yin side. Pure chakra Jutsu required different levels of balance between Yin and Yang chakra depending on the Jutsu.

Wanting to increase her overall chakra reserves and be able to move into stronger seals, Hinata had to increase Yang part of her chakra. This mean additional physical training. It took only couple of weeks in the academy for Hinata to decide on the training regime that suited her. Then she started working on seals to augment it.

Initially she went for simple weight seals for her wrists and ankles, however soon realized that those were not optimal to give her body balanced workout. As some of her muscles had to work extra hard, while others got little to no additional workout.

As a growing seal master, she strived to optimize everything. After all, nearly any shinobi can turn a scroll into exploding scroll with minimum of seal training. It took an artist to condense seals to create exploding tags. Masters could condense seals to a quarter of exploding tags size while keeping the same exploding power.

Obviously, provided some seal training and ready design with instructions, even people with minimal seal training were able produce exploding tags, otherwise price for those would have been astronomical.

Over the following couple of months, she used all of her skills to mix, refine and combine many different seals into single design with a goal of getting the best workout and fastest increase of her Yang chakra. The final seal, her best work to date, consisted of 3 main training seals and many, many, many stabilizing and controlling seals.

After all the sealing array covered her whole body, and it would be unpleasant, to say the least, if the seal was to be damaged and destabilized for any reason. Be it injury, chakra injection via Genjutsu or Jyuken strike, or something as simple as her getting slightly bigger as she grew older.

The main seal of the array was a modified barrier seal, that projected a skintight barrier over her body. Every time she moved, she pushed against the barrier making any sort of movements more difficult. She had a bit of scare with an early version of the barrier. She didn't account that when she was breathing her rib cage was moving.

Those 10 breathless seconds were terrifying when she realized that she couldn't breathe. She was so confident about it too. When she applied the seal on her clone, it had no problem with it. Thankfully, she only pushed enough chakra for the barrier to last 1 minute and with her panicked movements, she was able to drain it in 10 seconds.

The next version of the barrier had provision to restrict slow movements less than fast movements, so breathing was much easier than walking, but walking was much easier that running, and running was easier than punching.

Then she added a form of memory to her barrier, so if she pushed her arm out, then the barrier form became of her with her hand outstretched. This way she had to fight barrier again to retract her hand, rather than barrier pushing it back for her.

Another benefit to her barrier was that it was two ways. While it contained her in, it also kept things out from entering the barrier. Any attack on her was lessened or completely stopped by her barrier. Which was very important since she was slower and her attacks weaker while the barrier was active.

To work on her endurance as well as to increase the workout at times when she was not actively training, she added some weight seals. Which essentially were modified storage seals, when weight of whatever stored inside was not transferred into the pocket dimension but rather added to the sealing medium. The extra weights also added the benefit of her strikes being much stronger while the seal was active, or much faster when it was deactivated.

Knowing that she may need to remove the weights at moment notice Hinata had to modify the seal in a way to be able to easily move weight to the pocket dimension at moment notice. It took a bit of experimenting with the seal, but she was able to get the result she wanted in the end.

The goal of the last seal was to increase her durability and ability to take damage. It worked as if she were walking on surface of another planet with greater gravity than that of Elemental Nations. However, it was very dangerous for her health. Normal weights only caused risk of pulling muscles or breaking bones, unless you do something dumb like dropping your hand with weights onto your face.

Additional gravity, on the other hand, put pressure not only on muscles or bones, but also on organs, making heart pump harder for blood to reach brain, lungs needed to provide more oxygen for harder working muscles, digestion pulling more minerals faster from food, and so on.

Organs were much harder to train than muscles, and too much pressure may cause significant health problems or even death. For those reasons Hinata opted to take it slow, and only increased her gravity by single percent point every two or three weeks, while continuing her normal physical workouts.

The barrier seal consumed a lot of chakra, especially when she was actively training. In addition to fueling the barrier, she often had to use chakra to augment her body speed and strength during exercises. Which mean her chakra coils and network had to work twice as hard, and her chakra pool depleted much quicker. The results of this were quicker charka recovery rate and faster growing chakra pool.

The weight and gravity seals were also increasing her own mass in relation to environment, so she had to apply a bit of chakra to soles of her feet, or she could break some surfaces as she walks on them. While her weight increase was not substantial at this moment, she wondered if she would have to learn to apply some chakra subconsciously while sleeping, as it may cause issues in the future. This constant adjustment of chakra while she walked or run, as well as constant expenditure while she stayed still resulted in her chakra control growing quite rapidly.

The first couple of weeks were very hard on her, but every time she saw her sister Hanabi, cousin Neji, or any other branch members of her family or even her orange wearing classmate, her resolve solidified, and she pushed on.

During this time, she also discovered and corrected numerous small problems with the seal that could not have been foreseen without using it for prolonged periods of time. All her initial tests lasted for less than 10 minutes.

One of the bigger problems was that she ran out of chakra very quickly and when it happened, all three training seals were disabled. This was a bad design as weight seals consumed next to no chakra, so there was no reason to let them be disabled other than by choice. To correct this problem, she added a small buffer of chakra dedicated to weight seals, which ensured that those would not be disabled unless she wished for it to happen.

The gravity seal required continuous inflow of chakra, however the amount of chakra it required was lower than her chakra regeneration capabilities. This mean she should also keep it active at all times. She fixed it by increasing minimum level of remaining chakra for the barrier seal to deactivate from 5% to 10% of her reserves. Thus, the gravity seal will only deactivate if she continues to lose chakra even after the barrier seal deactivated. This way the barrier seal would be disabled first, and it should allow for gravity seal to continue operating.

The 5% was the minimum level any ninja should go to without suffering severe chakra exhaustion that may take days or even weeks to recover from.

The new design led to her barrier seal lasting even less time, so to fix this problem, she added a much bigger chakra seal. It would siphon her chakra into the seal when her reserves reached 95% capacity. This way she could store some chakra while sleeping or on her days off to be used to prolong training.

She made sure that the seal siphoned chakra from all of her Tenketsu points equally. Different Jutsu and chakra skills required stronger chakra flows through different points. Developing all of her points equally allowed her to learn a wide variety of Jutsu while keeping all avenues for specializations later in life open.

Instead of using stored chakra to directly power the barrier, the chakra was used to refill her own chakra reserves if it fallen below 75%. This way she was able to use stored chakra not only for her physical training, but also to train her Byakugan, chakra control exercises, Jutsu and even used it to power seals she didn't have reserves to power on her own.

In parallel to the Yang seal she was also working on other seals she came up with while observing her classmates and older academy students.

When she had her second seal array finished, she wrote both seals on separate scrolls, rolled them up, locked them and wrote a single name on top of each.

Next day in the academy, when everyone went for a lunch break, she stuck into her cousin class and left the scrolls on two of the student desks. Then quickly and quietly left for her own lunch without anyone noticing.


	2. Gifts

**Gifts**

Tenten was an orphan as long as she could remember, and orphans have little opportunity of becoming a ninja. Something she wanted to become for the longest time. Despite what other kids and caretakers told her, she worked hard towards that dream. She even found a part time job in a local weapon shop to finance her studies.

Her efforts were rewarded last year, when she received an acceptance letter to her application into the Konoha Ninja Academy. It was the happiest day of her life. It took her one step closer to her dream of being strong kunoichi like her idol – Tsunade of Sanin.

Unfortunately, despite her best efforts, she didn't possess the same extreme strength or extraordinary chakra control as her idol. After many months of training and trying different ninja skills she discovered that she had a talent with weapons. It worked wonderfully with her part time work in the weapons shop.

She even started to work on seals recently, a must-have skill for any striving weapons expert. She was already approaching the point of expertise required to make exploding seals. It was sure to help to finance her ever growing collection of weapons.

This day was no different than others, classes just as boring as ever, she often wondered what was the point of 80% of the classes. Those had little to do with either civilian or shinobi lifestyles. The lunch went as usual until she came back to class and discovered a scroll with her name sitting on her desk.

Furthermore, it seems to be locked with a seal she didn't recognize. After asking some of her classmates about the origin of the scroll, she discovered, that none seem to know anything about the scroll. Curiously she noticed a similar scroll on Lee's desk, but before she could investigate, the teacher came back and afternoon lessons started.

After lessons Lee was the first one to approach her. He assumed that she was the one who gave him the scroll, as she were the only one in their class who demonstrated any proficiency with seals. After some brainstorming, they decided to explore two options. She would ask the weapon smith she worked for, if he knew how to unlock her scroll. Lee would ask a Jonin who took him under his wing, and was helping him to prepare to pass the academy exams without being able to mold chakra.

Making her way to a familiar weapon store, she waved to the owner "hello Kean-sama".

"Tenten-chan, how was the academy?" the kind old man replied, he was like a grandfather to her.

"Boring, as usual, no practical today, just theory. By the way, someone left a sealed scroll on my desk, I was wondering if you recognize the seal?" She handled him the scroll. The first rule everyone had to learn before learning any seals is that you do not touch unfamiliar seals. Those could be very dangerous.

Kean was surprised by the revelation, the sealed scrolls were rare, and chances of orphan like Tenten coming by one were very slim outside of high-ranking missions. He himself was never a ninja, even though he went to the ninja academy in his youth. Soon thereafter he discovered that while he has unhealthy fascination with weapons, he didn't have any particular talent or will to use one.

Soon he found himself helping in a forge as a young lad, and over the years worked himself into very proficient weaponsmith. Maybe twenty years ago he had enough saved that he could open his own shop, and had been working in it ever since. Most of the stuff he sold was made by others, as a master weaponsmith he only done special orders nowadays, lacking time and health for full time smiting. He also enjoyed the shop front role too much to part with it.

While he was in no way seal master, he had enough proficiency in it to be able to produce exploding tags and sealing scrolls. In addition, as part of the job, he knew a lot of different ninjas as well as came in contact with wide variety of seals some of the ninja used. When he saw a seal on the scroll Tenten gave him, he knew right away that it was not a simple scroll lock.

"Oh my.. Haven't seen one of those in a while" he exclaimed, getting a excited reaction from Tenten. "Oh, common old man! What does it do, tell me, tell me, tell me!" She may have been quite mature for 9 years old, which was a requirement to work with sharp weapons, but she still was just an easily excited kid. Which made him laugh.

"Haha, calm down Tenten-chan. The most common way to lock a scroll is to use chakra lock seal. What you have there is a more advanced version of that seal, - personal chakra seal. Meaning only very specific chakra signature can open this scroll. Watch" he said while channeling a small portion of his chakra into the scroll. The locking seal glowed a bit for a moment, but the scroll remained closed.

"Here, try pushing some chakra into the seal" he said, handling her the scroll back.

With a small trepidation she pushed her chakra into the seal. At first the seal glowed the same way it did for the shop owner, just long enough for doubts to start appearing in her mind of this being some cruel joke. Then, with a barely audible click, the scroll's rim opened. With a quick glance at encouraging smile from the old man she started to unroll it.

The scroll turned out to be quite short, maybe three quarters of a meter long. At first it appeared to be empty until she got to the middle of the scroll where she saw two seals, on opposite sides of the scroll. Without questions those were the most complex seals she ever saw.

"Kean-sama?" she asked nervously when she saw his wide-eyed expression.

Her words snapped him out of his trance. He glanced couple of times between scroll and her, before he started laughing, which only increased her confusion. It took a couple of minutes for him to finally stop laughing with mirth. He wiped his moisture eyes, before looking at her with admiration.

"I don't know what you did Little Bear, but it caught eyes of some real strong ninja" he told her with pride.

"Huh?" was her intelligent response.

He took the scroll from her and turned it around, showing her seals on both sides of the scroll. Both were quite complex, with the seal on the front of the scroll clearly bigger and more complex than the one on the back of the scroll.

"See those two seals on the opposite sides of the scroll?" she nodded.

"This is a two-way seal!" he said as if it explained everything.

"Huh, what does that mean? Do you know what it does?" She asked excitedly.

"Two-way seals are very advanced. It is like adding extra dimension to your seal with a whole lot of additional complexities, it is essentially three-dimensional seal written on two dimensional medium" seeing her confused look, he considered how to explain it in a way she would understand.

"Those seals are so advanced, that the number of people who can make them in Konoha probably can be counted on fingers of a single hand" this did make her eyes go wide. However, he wasn't done yet.

"In fact, this type of scrolls is so rare, that I never even saw one. I only heard about them" seeing her unblinking stare he went for the killing blow.

"Scrolls like this are usually kept by clans as a treasure, and very rarely can be seen by an outsider. It can take seal master weeks or even months just to make one" with a quite 'thump!' Tenten fell to the ground in a dead faint. This made the old weapons smith laugh again.

He gave the scroll last admiring glance before carefully rolling it back at which point the scroll automatically locked itself. He then lifted Tenten and carried her to his living room where he carefully placed her on his couch. He covered her with a small blanked and left the sealed scroll on the coffee table next to her.

(*L*)

Hiruzen Sarutobi was an old man, a very tired old man. He lived through and saw more conflict than about anyone alive. He saw three Great Shinobi Wars and countless small ones, first as Genin, then as a Chunin and finally as the Hokage.

His clan didn't provide him with any special bloodline limit, no special benefit in either body, mind or special chakra, even as far as clan techniques the Sarutobi clan was very limited. Perhaps, because of this lack of focus as a child, he was quite kind on trying many different shinobi arts, from Taijutsu to Genjutsu, from Bokenjutsu to Ninjutsu, from Kenjutsu to Sealing Arts, not even Summoning skipped his attention.

Having two legendary ninjas such as First and Second Hokages as his teachers ensured that he had goals and role models that would push him to achieve things beyond what anyone would have expected from someone in his position. He worked hard, pushing his body, mind and chakra to its very limits.

When his peers were happy to settle for 10 different Jutsus, he went for 100, when his peers settled for proficiency, he worked until he achieved mastery. When his peers worked on a single element affinity, he worked on all 5, when others slowed down once reaching their goals, he reset his goals even higher. Always working, always expanding, always perfecting.

By the time he was nominated to become The Third Hokage, his reputation could rival that of his role models. Even as the Hokage he never settled and continue to not only improve himself, but also drive the Village of Konoha to its golden age.

However, everyone has limits, and as years came and went, his aging body could no longer handle his insane workload. His emotional stability was shaken first by death of both of his mentors and role models, then betrayal by his favorite student, his wife and successor dying during Kyuubi incident, the death of one of his sons was the final blow that broke the camel's back.

Even his best friends and teammates turned on him at his weakest moments, trying to wrestle as much control and power from him as they could, instead of providing support he so desperately needed. These days, just getting from day to day was all he could do to keep himself going.

The wish of handling Konoha into capable hands, so his remaining son and grandson could benefit from the work and blood of his mentors, himself and brief successor, was the only things keeping him going. However, as years went one after another, with each potential successor incapacitated in one way or the other, before they could reach his high standards, his hopes were slowly eroding.

It was while he was contemplating his life and life choices once again, that he heard one of his stronger Jonins even before he entered the tower. It gave him just enough time to prepare himself before said Jonin entered his office.

Miato Guy was one of his most promising ninjas. One strong enough, that he considered him as one of viable candidates as his successor. While his eccentricity could be overlooked in favor of his physical strength and his Will of Fire, some of his qualities were harder for Sarutobi to overlook.

In his advanced age, he saw enough fighting to last many lifetimes, and he was reluctant these days to do anything that may result in conflict. This was one of many conflicting points he had with elders and especially, - Danzo.

In fact, in many ways Guy reminded him of Danzo. Danzo saw domination and elimination of other Hidden Villages as the only way to keep Konoha safe and prosperous. If given power he will do everything to weaken and sabotage the other villages, in fact Sarutobi strongly suspected than even now he was covertly doing just that with his branch of Root ANBU. If nothing else, he suspected that if another Great Shinobi War were to begin, that there will be more that a fair share of blame to be placed on Danzo.

The Root was disbanded by the Forth Hokage, but was reestablished under secret agreement that was pushed through after The Kyuubi incident, and before he was able to get properly back into Hokage role. He had hard time recovering from the death of his wife and the Elders took full advantage of his weakened emotional state to further their own power. Something he saw as betrayal of over 50 years of their friendship, he didn't think he will ever be able to forgive them.

Guy was not thirsty for war or elimination of his opponents, however he liked fighting more than was healthy, and considered it to be one of the best ways to understand his opponents. Despite his inhuman strength, he rarely inflicted permanent injuries, or killed his opponents, which were the easy ways to generate grudges and resentment, which eventually led to conflicts and wars.

That quality of Guy ultimately was the only reason he was still considered as viable candidate for Hokage title. In Sarutobi's eyes, the Guy's rule was more likely to result in some Chunin Exam like tournaments, than in actual wars. Perhaps it was a necessary step to reduce tension between Great Powers, he mused. For all its faults, the Chunin Exams were working, and tensions between Great Five were never as low as they were in recent years.

"Yosh, Hokage-sama, I see your flames of youth still burn brightly!" was expected and too energetic for his old body greeting.

"Guy. I thought you had another 4 days off before your next mission. What brings you to my office?"

"The most youthful endeavor Hokage-sama. I was wondering if you were familiar with this" he said, strolling to his desk and placing a scroll before him, causing him to raise an elbow.

A quick look over shown that the scroll was of average size in both width and length. He also spotted a neat written name of "Lee", as well as a blood seal on the exterior. At the moment the seal was plugged by a piece of paper, to prevent scroll from closing.

It was a well-known method among Jonin to keep locking scrolls from being closed if the scroll was not keyed to said Jonin. This caused Sarutobi to give his Jonin a quick look, as this trick was usually only employed during missions when some sealed scrolls were "liberated".

After finding nothing else of note on the outside of the scroll, he carefully rolled it open, and raised second elbow. The scroll had many, many overlapping seals from edge to edge. Using the whole surface of the scroll entirely.

He recognized some of the seals, but the design was unfamiliar to him, and the overlapping nature of the seals made it quite hard to identify the nature of the seal with simple quick examination. He then took another minute examining some of the seals trying to identify a sealing style to link it to some of the seal Master he knew, but quickly realized that the style was not familiar to him.

Wrapping the scroll back up he placed it on his desk while fixing Guy with intense stare.

"Can I enquire how did you come in possession of this scroll Guy?" he asked the Jonin.

"Certainty Lord Third! It was given as a gift to my most young-full student – Lee" he said with pride in his eyes while mentioning his student.

"I was unaware you took on an apprentice Guy"

"Unofficially Hokage-sama, he currently goes to academy, however I am planning on taking him as part of my team once he graduates" he replied with a conviction.

"I see. And were you able to determine who did give this scroll to the young Lee? I am not familiar with either design or the style used in this scroll."

"Unfortunately, no" he replied dejectedly, "it was left on his desk in the academy during recess."

"Hmm. Bear, bring Kakashi to my office. Ant, assemble team Seer to be ready for a mission. Guy, what is the background of your student?" He put his arms in front of his face. This day was going to be one of those.

As he gave orders, two shadows in his office moved and disappeared through the open window. It was troubling that there was unknown Seal Master in Konoha, able to sneak into Ninja Academy without being spotted. Seal Masters were notorious for the amount of damage they could inflict if they had ulterior motives and were given time to prepare their seals.

Guy just finished giving him a brief overview of his student, when Bear reappeared in his office with Kakashi in tow.

"Yo" was his lazy greeting.

"Kakashi, my eternal rival! I challenge you to a 500 laps race around the village, to stroke our flames or youth!"

"Huh. Guy? Did you say something?"

"Damn you Kakashi, and your hip attitude!"

Sarutobi just massaged his temples, the beginning of headache already building. He should have known better than getting Guy and Kakashi into the same room with him. Their rivalry was a stuff of legends, despite it appearing to be one way, and had caused him more than a fair share of headaches.

Hatake Kakashi was another of his promising Jonin, however life was not kind on him. He once was a prime candidate for a position of Hokage, however after suffering many losses from friends and family, his will of fire disappeared. He was still an excellent ninja, and success rate of his missions still among the best, but his inner spark was missing, and Hokage didn't want for his successor to be just like him, - a hollow shell of his former self.

"Kakashi, please take a look at this scroll and tell me what you think" he offered the scroll to his broken Jonin.

Much like himself Kakashi first carefully examined the scroll on the outside before unrolling to peer at the content. After just 10 seconds of looking inside he carefully lifted his headband which was hanging over left side of his face covering his left eye.

He took another minute carefully examining the scroll with both of his eyes, one black, and another red, with three black tomoes slowly circling inside his iris. After that he pulled his headband down over his red – Sharingan eye and spend another minute staring into space, while rest of the occupants of the room patiently waited on him.

"Damn, that is some good work" he whistled.

Just before Hokage was able to get more details, the Ant reappeared kneeled.

"Hokage-sama, team Seer is ready for mission" he said with a bow.

"Call them in" he ordered, and once the team of ANBU assembled he quickly explained the situation about the scroll, before turning to Kakashi.

"What have you discovered?"

"This design is not familiar to me, neither is the style, however the writing style indicate someone with training in calligraphy. The strokes are sure, without hesitation, indicating work of someone with experience, who knew what they were doing, rather than being a copy by an apprentice" at this he hesitated slightly, causing Hokage to narrow his eyes in alarm.

"What it is Kakashi" he asked in low voice, causing Kakashi to gulp slightly before continuing.

"The strokes are extremely precise, indicating a collapsed seal, or", another gulp, "someone with a bloodline that have high effect on precision – like Sharingan" he finished quietly to a defeating silence. Hokage was the first one to recover.

"This scroll and everything related to it is now an A-rank village secret. Kakashi, what is estimated collapsing factor?" He asked with trepidation.

"One hundred" he whispered, making Hokage curse.

"Kakashi, you are in charge of the team Seer, I want to know the point of origin and the function of that scroll yesterday! When you discover The Seal Master, DO NOT approach! Notify me at once! It is A-ranked mission! I want daily reports, the first report in 3 hours! Ant, assemble three squads of ANBU to be on standby ready to engage S-ranked thread."

"Guy, you are on extended B-rank mission until we get to the bottom of this. You are to shadow your student for any suspicious activity around him and report any findings to Kakashi. If the Seal Master turns hostile, you are to assist engagement team. Everyone clear on their mission? Dismissed."

With a quick "Hai", everyone left, leaving Hokage rubbing his tired eyes. Dear Kami, a collapsible seal with factor hundred would have been at least 100 times bigger than the collapsed seal, the size of a sizeable room, and at least 10 times more complex, as seal complexity grew with collapsing factor. He honestly couldn't tell what he would prefer, a seal master capable of doing collapsing seal of that magnitude, or lost Seal Master Uchiha. He really hoped that it was something else, as neither scenario sounded good.


	3. Hornet Nest

**Hornet nest**

Hatake Kakashi was at some point a genius unmatched in the Konoha Village, holding the titles of youngest Genin, Chunin, Jonin, ANBU and ANBU Commander.

Back then, he had the drive to be the best. At first, as a way to distance himself from shame of his father. Who committed suicide, unable to handle backlash from failing very important mission in favor of saving lives of his teammates.

Later, Kakashi had similar experience, but he chose mission over his teammates, and that cost his team dearly. He lost an eye and his Uchiha teammate died, leaving him one of his Sharingan eyes as something to remember him by.

That event made him realize, that his father was correct all those years ago. He resumed training like never before. Never again he would allow his friends to die... It was not enough. Soon thereafter he lost his other teammate, and then, not much later, his Sensei – The Fourth Hokage, who was like father to him.

Now, he just felt empty, old. Food lost its taste, few friends he has left could barely make him feel anything. Often, he would find himself just staring into space for hours to an end, remembering past mistakes and wondering when his time will finally come to be reunited with his loved ones.

His father ensured, that he would never take his own life. It didn't stop him from taking on all of the hardest missions. While he lost many teammates during those missions, the death never claimed him. After a while, he just got tired, and resigned from the ANBU. These days, he went to the barest minimum of missions and simply existed, as this could be hardly called life.

Today was no different from yesterday, or day before, or day before then, until he got a summon to Hokage office. This was not that unusual on itself, but generally Hokage refrained from calling on him more than once a month, and his last summon was just over a week ago.

As soon as he laid his eyes on the scroll with his Sharingan he felt a shiver travel down his spine. It took him some time to realize, that he felt something that he hadn't felt in years – real fear. There were only two remaining Uchiha's.

One who came close of besting Kakashi's own rank achievements. The one who single handedly eliminated one of the biggest and strongest clans in Konoha of some 300 ninjas' plus 200 civilians. All of that without anyone in Konoha realizing that anything happened until he already left – Uchiha Itachi.

The other one, the only survivor of the Uchiha massacre, – 8 years old younger brother of the clan murderer. He just entered the ninja Academy a couple of months previously. If rumors to be believed, he was a genius too, however, clearly, nowhere near Itachi's level.

It was pretty clear in Kakashi's mind which of the two Uchihas was more likely to be a Seal Master. Damn! He wasn't sure if he could win against Itachi in a straight fight, but with seals, even Hokage may find his match in a fight. He still could clearly remember what his sensei could do with those.

This didn't even account for all potential collateral. As far as he was concerned, Konoha may be looking into another Kyuubi level incident. He wasn't sure if Konoha can survive another incident of such magnitude so soon after the last.

(*L*)

As soon as Hokage dismissed them, he took the team Seer to the closest hidden ANBU training undergrounds. They had no time to waste, and the training ground would provide excellent base of operation, as well as minimize damage if he were to accidentally trigger the scroll.

"Masks off" he told them as soon as barrier was up and the grounds secure. Others ANBU will now know that the grounds were occupied and look for another one.

He took a moment to examine each members of the team Seer, perhaps the best Hunter Nin team in Konoha. Recalling any information, he has on them from previous missions together. Another moment was spend deciding on best strategy of completing the mission with minimal danger.

Biting his trump, he summoned Pakkun who has best sense of smell of all of his ninken. He gave the ninken the quick overview of the mission before addressing everyone present.

"The situation is quite dangerous, so use discretion. No one to act on their own, ensure that you always have at least one other person as a backup."

"Ryou, Hikari and Pakkun, you will be trying to track the scroll's creator. Take your time to examine the scroll before heading to the Academy. Start from classroom 10-A and work your way from there."

"Kaori and Takumi will be working on trying to learn more about the scroll's origin and history. Make a decoy and start from the Kumiko's Bookstore. How it is made, who produces them, where you can buy one, you know the drill."

"I will stay here coordinating the efforts and will try to decipher the seal itself. This situation can easily escalate to something ugly. Use caution at all times, and report any discrepancies and irregularities, independent how insignificant you think those are."

"If someone didn't wipe their ass or didn't wash their hands in a toilet, I want to know about it. Report back in 2 hours, we will exchange notes and form next plan of action before I have to report to the Hokage."

(*L*)

It was nearly three hours later that tired and close to having chakra exhaustion Kakashi found himself in front of Hokage once again. He had to use his Sharingan quite a lot in the last three hours to speed up the scroll deciphering.

Looking at the Hokage, it was clear that the last three hours were not kind on the old man either, if his exhausted look was anything to go by.

Kakashi of course didn't know, that the last three hours were some of the most productive hours the Hokage had in this office. Afraid of possible problems due to the mysterious scroll, he had cleared his schedule for the nearest future by doing several weeks' worth of paperwork in the last three hours.

He had to go as far as to use couple of Shadow Clones to help him, which were dispelled just moments ago, and he was feeling the backlash very strongly right now.

Meanwhile ANBU stationed around the office looked at the Hokage with wide open eyes. The amount of information he just jammed into his brain and processed would give anyone else aneurism. For the first time they saw why he got the title of Professor, as none of them were old enough to see the Hokage in action previously.

The ferocity with which he attacked the stacks of paperwork. Speed with which the clones moved. The pure teamwork they demonstrated. It was obvious why he got the title of God of Shinobi at the battlefield.

"Kakashi, report" the Hokage said after taking a couple of deep breaths.

"Creator of the scroll is neither identified nor tracked down yet. The scroll function is not yet clear" he gave quick summary of the mission, before proceeding with details.

"No solid leads have been identified. The scroll retained no usable sample of the creator's smell, the chakra of the seals is too faint for identifiable signature. This type of scroll is made of common paper, is mass produced in significant quantities, and being sold all across Elementary Nations" taking a breath, he continued the report.

"None of the teachers spotted anyone unknown or suspicious on the Academy grounds that day or any other day recently. No related reports of suspicious people or activities were filled by ANBU patrols for area around The Academy."

"The seal have characteristics of being migrating, multi-layer, adjustable and unstable" this made Hokage visibly wince, those were signs of work of Seal Master. Even then, generally not used to describe single seal, and most definitely not a collapsed seal with factor 100.

Migrating seals were the ones that were not intended to be used by the medium they were written on, meaning that the seal was not meant to be used from the scroll, but need to be transferred to another medium.

Multi-layer designs have multiple layers of seals stacked one on top of another without actually interacting. It allowed to condense more seals onto smaller area, as well as making the seal harder to identify or reproduce. However, it was quite tricky to draw without destabilizing the whole seal array or compromising the underlaying seals function.

Adjustable seals could be applied to multiple mediums. Allowing more flexible usage of the seal, as it could be applied to variety of mediums of different size, proportion or material.

Unstable seals were tricky, as they usually mean big explosion if not treated properly. This was often used as a way to protect seals from being tinkered with. Such attempts often ended with a sizeable crater and a bloody mist.

After giving Hokage a moment to process the information Kakashi continued.

"So far, I was able to distinguish 72 seals, of those 52 were identified, and another 20 are unknown to me. Of the identified seals 40 are array stabilizing seals, 3 migrating seals, 2 array adjustment seals, 2 weights seals, 1 mapping seal, 1 blood seal, 1 chakra draw seal, 1 storage seal and 1 barrier seal".

"This is the list of seals that I couldn't identify" he finished while handling the Hokage a scroll.

"Dear Kami, 40 stabilizing seals from just 3-hour assessment, how unstable is that thing?" the Hokage asked rhetorically, as both of them knew that Explosive Tag, for example, have just 2 stabilizing seals that were disabled by a simple chakra pulse to trigger explosion.

"I will have those seals looked up in the library and get back to you when done" the Hokage responded.

Despite his high rank, Kakashi and even most ANBU had no access to the most secure part of the library, where the most sensitive and secret information was stored, including many of the higher-level books on seals. Kakashi's team would check the avenues they had access to, and Hokage would ensure that the seals would be checked in more secure facilities.

"Our team is based at the Hidden Grounds 4, Hokage-sama" he replied

"Very well, what is your team's next steps?"

"In absence of solid leads team Seer are currently doing a detailed survey of the Academy building, looking for any hidden seals, traps or Genjutsus. They are also collecting all unique smells and chakra signatures in the building, and will start identifying them once students return, perhaps we can identify creator by exclusion."

"There was an anomaly in Kumiko's Bookstore, as it appears that the Hyuga Clan been buying out this sort of scrolls as well as other writing equipment for years now, and the store experiences periodical shortages."

"Tomorrow Haru Hyuga is coming back from his weeklong mission, and I will see what I can find out about the reason for such intense shopping. It may be related to the mission, but since that behavior persisted for years, it is unlikely. Meanwhile, I will continue attempts to decipher the seal."

"Hyuga's are known to teach their children calligraphy, and Hiashi's eldest should have reached the right age couple years ago. However, it should not have caused store shortages" the Hokage mussed with his fingers intertwined in front of him.

"If we are lucky, perhaps the Hyugas have a new Seal Master, that will explain such big demand for writing equipment. Kakashi, see what you can find out from your friend. I will see if I can get anything out of Hiashi during council meeting tomorrow. Is there anything else Kakashi?" he asked, narrowing his eyes when Kakashi looked uncomfortable.

"Well, you see, when the team Seer were looking for any anomalies in the Academy, they spotted numerous things, that do not look related to the mission, but may be of interest" he finished uncomfortably before taking a small scroll for his inner pocket and handling it to Hokage.

The Hokage opened the scroll and started reading, as he read, his eye started to twitch, before he focused his angry eyes on him.

"No guards around the Academy, training grounds are all empty, only single teacher still in the building, what looks like unmarked assignments in garbage bin, and so forth. Is this some sort of joke Kakashi? Because if it is, it is not funny" it was clear the Hokage was very unimpressed with the findings.

Kakashi didn't blame him, he himself was quite disturbed. He may not have attended the Academy for very long, but he remembered how it was full of activity nearly around the clock back in the day. How frustrating it was when you couldn't find empty training ground as all were taken even during night or early mornings.

"No Hokage-sama" he responded, making the village leader rub his forehead.

"This is unacceptable! Finding the scroll creator is your teams' primary mission, however identifying those anomalies is now secondary goal. Keep me notified of any new findings. Dismissed."

(*L*)

Obvious to the hornet nest her kind gesture disturbed, Hinata continued her days as if nothing happened. The majority of subjects in the Academy were no challenge to her, much she learned as part of her clan training, rest just came easy to her.

Reluctant to waste time, she used her classes to train. One of the ways to do that was to use her Byakugan. It allowed her to see through walls and in all directions at once. She used her eyes to observe her follow classmates, teachers, other classes and even outside into the village.

Sometimes she followed ANBU patrolling the village, other times she watched kids play tug, but her favorite was watching ninja train. The training grounds were quite far from the Academy, but if she concentrated, she could watch couple of the closest.

It was hard to decipher chakra at such range. However, it was an excellent way to improve range and sensitivity of her Byakugan. This was also a nice way to expand her jutsus collection outside of her father's control, even if it took significant amount of time and efforts.

The jutsus she observer were random, and it took multiple sessions of observing same jutsu before she could start making progress in recreating it. She has sketches of tens of different jutsus, but only the most common and low level she ever tried to replicate.

Her clan would frown at her blatant use of their bloodline limit to, essentially, steal techniques, "like a common Uchiha" they will say. In her eyes, if this allowed her to become stronger to protect her little sister and the village, then it was well worth it.

Despite her chakra reserves growing nicely, and use of the chakra storage seal, the Byakugan was still eating a lot of her chakra. When it was pushed to its limits, she could only keep it active for small amounts of time, usually only for 5-10 minutes at a time.

When her chakra would run out, she would spend her time making notes in her small notebook. Sometimes she would write down anything of note she saw with her eyes. Other times, she would record some new ideas that came to her. Sometimes, she would just do some drawings, which was one of her hobbies. Most often, she would try to solve some problems with a sealing array she was working on at the time.

For the last couple of days, she observed her cousin class, trying to judge the reaction of Lee and Tenten. The first time she tried to gift some of her work, it went disastrous, and she spend couple of hours crying over it.

This time at least it looked like both of them were quite happy over the gift. She read their lips and knew, that both managed to open their scrolls, however neither seem to have activated the inner seal yet. It looked like they were wary to activate a seal they didn't understand, as warned by the people they knew.

She wondered if she should have included instructions. Oh well, watching them going about guessing was very entertaining. It was also giving her lots of new ideas.

Those two were specifically picked from the whole Academy. Both were nice, from underprivileged background and worked very hard to become ninja. Lee was getting some instructions from one of the villages Jonins, and Tenten already had some knowledge in seals. Confident that they will be able to use the scrolls soon enough, she turned to other things of interest.

She noticed increased ANBU activities in the school building, especially after classes. They seem to be looking for someone or something. Even saw them going over the rooms and teacher's things at night from her bedroom.

For her, it was not the first time she followed ANBU on an in-village mission. Those were quite interesting to watch. There was much to learn about how high-level ninja operated. Unfortunately, the higher ranked ninja never discussed missions while performing them. Rare exception being use of codded hand language to coordinate efforts.

This mean that she never knew what was their objectives, and had to guess it from their actions. Still, it gave her unique insight into how ANBU operated. When you can literally see through the walls at great distance, you tend to see a lot that is hidden from normal people. For example, she didn't think any of the teachers even knew about the increased ANBU activities in the school.

(*L*)

The Hokage just got into the office from restless sleep, expecting to be woken up due to the current Seal Master crisis at any moment, when he got his first unpleasant surprise of the day.

"Danzo" he greeted his old rival, "what can I do for you?"

"Hiruzen, you failed to notify the council of a S-rank thread" he started without preamble.

"Oh, so how exactly did you find out about the thread?" Hokage asked back with narrowed eyes.

"Surely you didn't expect for three squads of ANBU on high alert to go unnoticed?"

"No, I did not. You cannot hide operation of that size within the village, but I hoped to keep it quite a bit longer. I am surprised you reacted this fast, considering your competency problems I was made aware off recently" he admitted, adding a jab at Danzo in the end, to derail the discussion into area he wanted.

"You have a lot of nerve Hiruzen bringing my competency into question, if not for my ROOT, the Konoha would not be standing today" he responded hotly. Big contrast to what he preached as a way to train shinobi as nothing more than emotionless husks.

"I am yet to see proof of your claims Danzo. If your ROOT operations are managed as well as Ninja Academy, then you are either incompetent, or a traitor who sabotages this village's future" he said with stern look while throwing the scroll Kakashi delivered to him last night.

"You know as well as I that ROOT are outside of your influence Hiruzen by design. Without knowledge of their operations you have clear deniability, and therefore Konoha cannot be kept accountable for any possible fallouts."

"That is bullshit, and you know it Danzo. It may fool Civilian Council, but any shinobi will tell you than any fallout can be resolved by declaring the shinobi who failed a mission as a missing-nin. This tactic was used since before Hidden Villages were founded" the Hokage said, taking a breath to calm himself, he continued bitterly.

"You just got what you always wanted, to have your own private army, that is not kept accountable by anyone but yourself. I am the Hokage, absolute leader of this village, and yet you keep any information about your ROOT or their missions from me" he finished.

"You lost your touch Hiruzen, you are no longer willing to get your hands dirty for the benefit of Konoha. Someone had to step in and ensure that what needed to be done is done. You may not agree to my methods, but they get things done. Unlike your methods, that fail time and time again, but you are too weak to accept it. Should I remind you about the recent Hyuga and Uchiha incidents" he pushed back, making Hokage see red.

"How dare you!" He said with forced calmness in his voice. "You went behind my back and weakened this village like never before."

"I saved this village. I did what you were too weak to do. Your soft methods would have seen this Village destroyed, just because you were too weak to do what was necessary!" The Danzo shot back hotly.

The Third had to take couple of calming breaths at this, to ensure he didn't lose it in front of Danzo. No doubts Danzo wanted just that to use it against him latter to take even more power for himself. The disappointed look at Danzo's stoic face was all evidence he needed to confirm his theory.

Ever since they were mere Academy students, he and Danzo never agreed on anything. Danzo always preferred a military domination of their opponents as a way to secure Konoha's future. He himself always felt that if Senju and Uchiha were able to find common ground to create Konoha and put decades of bad blood between their clans behind them, then a peace between all villages in Elemental Nations was also possible.

Unfortunately, despite his best efforts he was not able to achieve the peace he so desired. He may have convinced his student - Jiraya that it was possible, and even the Fourth Hokage believed in peace through a compromise. After the Fourth death, there was no one left of younger generation to stir the Village in that direction.

Only now, he fondly realized how naive he was back in his youth. Last ten years were the most peaceful Elemental Nations had in known history, however it was clear the peace was not going to last for very much longer.

Now he understood, that he was too ambitious. It took multiple generations of people working towards peace to achieve it. He understood that road to the peace was never straight. Sometimes great progress can be made in short time, like when Konoha was created. Other times the progress will be reversed and violence will start again with renewed vigor, like the three Great Shinobi Wars that followed creation of Hidden Villages.

"Once again our views differ Danzo. I am curious, what possible excuse you can provide to turning Ninja Academy into nothing better than common civilian school?" He asked with false curiosity. Danzo took a moment to read through the scroll, before nonchalantly dropping it onto his desk.

"Not surprising that standards were allowed to fall that far under your weak rule. Hashirama- and Tobirama-sensei should have known better than to entrust The Village to you, I would have never allowed this to happen" he said with little care.

"You seem to forget in your age that Academy is currently under yours control" the Hokage replied.

"Perhaps it is you that is forgetting that it is controlled by Civilian Council, something you allowed to happen may I add."

"Don't take me for a fool Danzo, we both know that you are the one who makes all important decisions when it comes to Civilian Council. The Academy, you seem to have conveniently forgot, was pushed into hands of Civilian Council before I was reinstalled as Hokage" he responded while focusing on the ceiling to recall those painful memories.

"Koharu, Homura and yourself were the ones to spearhead the notion if I remember, to 'a temporary move, to help unload duties from Hokage, so he can focus on rebuilding and protecting the Village' if I am not mistaken? Isn't that right Danzo?" He asked his rival.

"Hrmm. That was best decision to ensure Konoha's survival at the time. Do not pretend like you were not overwhelmed with organization of Village defenses and rebuilding efforts at the time Hiruzen. Quite a few people were worried that you may overwork yourself to death at the time" he said with false sympathy, as if his death at the time would have been preferred option.

"Excessive workload is something I could handle, as my old teammates and rival should have known better than anyone else. What I could not handle is betrayal by those closest people when I needed their support the most" he replied bitterly, seeing that Danzo was about to reply, he interrupted him, as they were going of topic, something he realized was Danzo's goal.

"Save it Danzo, I say it as I see it. Despite our differences, I never questioned your motives, only your methods. I allowed you much freedom, and overlooked many of your more questionable actions, however this" he pointed at half unrolled scroll on his desk, "this is crossing the line." He fixed his rival with stern gaze, letting silence to stretch for couple of seconds to get his point across, before continuing.

"Seven days Danzo. I give you seven days to see The Ninja Academy start returning to its previous standards" he told him sternly.

"Or you would do what Hiruzen?" He asked back, making Hokage narrow his eyes.

"Or I will start taking actions. Do not mistake inactivity for ignorance Danzo. You have been warned"

"Do not pretend you can give me orders Hiruzen. I am no longer answering to you" after that he turned and went from the office, but not before Hokage had his last word.

"Seven Days Danzo!"

Once Danzo left, old Hokage had to rub his forehead, he could already feel a headache coming, and it was not even 7 am yet.


End file.
